Rjr Nabisco

The Pritzker family of Chicago, riding a dark horse in the race to buy RJR Nabisco Inc., jumped out ahead of a field of bidders with a staggering proposal it valued as high as $26.79 billion. The complex transaction contemplated by the Pritzkers, who are working with the investment firm of First Boston Corp. and Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, wasn`t definite enough to be called a formal offer. But it was so high above the two formal offers for the Atlanta tobacco and food company...

The man who brought you Healthy Choice meals after he suffered a heart attack is giving the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business one of the largest cash gifts in the school's history, the university announced Friday. Charles M. "Mike" Harper, 79, who earned his MBA at the school before going on to a career that led him to the top job at ConAgra Foods Inc. and later at RJR Nabisco Inc., is giving to the school an undisclosed sum, but one certainly totaling millions of dollars.

RJR Nabisco Inc. said it sold five European food businesses to the French food and beverage company BSN for $2.5 billion. They are the United Kingdom biscuit business of Nabisco Brands; British snack-makers Walker's Crisps and Smith's Crisps; The Belin Group, a French biscuit and pastry business; and Saiwa, a biscuit and snack producer in Italy.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Blackstone Group LP are among buyout firms that are increasingly teaming up to acquire bigger companies and avoid competing with each other. KKR, the world's No. 1 buyout firm, and Blackstone, manager of the largest takeover fund, are part of a group of seven firms that may bid as much as $10 billion for softwaremaker SunGard Data Systems Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. Combining resources reduces the risk of the managers putting too...

RJR Nabisco Inc. officially became the biggest takeover show on Earth Monday, when Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. made a debt-defying bid of $20.61 billion for that tobacco and food company. The $90-a-share offer by the New York-based leveraged buyout specialists topped a $75-a-share, or $17.2 billion, takeover proposal that an investor group led by RJR's top management is considering making. Kohlberg Kravis also would assume about $5.5 billion of RJR debt, pushing the total...

QUESTIONS: 1) Currently a co-star of the ABC sitcom "8 Simple Rules," James Garner will receive a life achievement award during the 11th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, which TNT will televise Saturday, Feb. 5. In how many TV series has he played the part of Western gambler Bret Maverick? 2) Which of Garner's co-stars in the adventure classic "The Great Escape" (1963) also were members of "The Magnificent Seven" (1960)? 3) Garner played Wyatt Earp in two movies. Name...

Hearst Corp., the publishing giant, bought a 20 percent stake in the sports network ESPN, the nation's largest cable-programming service. Hearst bought the interest from RJR Nabisco for undislosed terms. Capital Cities/ABC owns the remaining 80 percent share of ESPN. The ESPN network goes to more than 57 million viewers and operates 24 hours a day.

Earlier this year, executives at Morningstar Inc. concluded they needed outside capital to take the privately held firm and its storehouse of mutual fund and stock research on-line. One phone call--to the chief financial officer of Softbank Corp.--was all they needed. Within a month, recalls Morningstar Chief Executive Don Phillips, the parties had a handshake agreement, and by July, only a few weeks later, the Chicago-based business had $91 million in fresh cash from the...

RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. said Wednesday it has decided against proceeding for now with a planned public offering of a new class of stock tied to the performance of its food business. The food and tobacco company had said in announcing its plans in March that it hoped to raise about $1.5 billion by selling food stock at $17 to $19 a share. The sale was expected to take place this week. But the company said Wednesday the value of comparable food companies had...

The breakup of RJR Nabisco is a victory for the health and welfare of consumers around the world. The size, scope and power to peddle influence of the $17 billion tobacco giant, the second largest U.S.-based tobacco corporation, will be drastically reduced if the transaction is completed. While the world economy and other factors had a hand in the crackup of Joe Camel's empire, millions of people refusing to support the merchants of death helped tochange the business climate for big tobacco.

By Janet Key and Laurie Cohen. William Gruber also contributed to this report | December 2, 1988

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.'s acquisition of RJR Nabisco Inc., the largest in U.S. history, may not turn into the typical fire sale of assets common in such huge, debt-financed deals, according to financial details disclosed Thursday. Kohlberg Kravis acquired RJR Nabisco Wednesday night for nearly $25 billion in a bitter, chaotic takeover fight against a management group led by RJR Chairman F. Ross Johnson. The winning bid came to $109 a share-$81 in cash, $18 in preferred...

The subtitle of "Barbarians at the Gate," the brilliant account of the takeover of RJR Nabisco in 1988, is "The Downfall of RJR Nabisco." In fact, it has taken more than a decade for a formal announcement of the dismantling of the wounded food and tobacco conglomerate. And still, the end is not in sight. Last week, Steven Goldstone, RJR Nabisco's chief executive officer, who was a lawyer for the company in 1988, announced a plan to sell the company's international...

RJR Nabisco Inc. is considering the sale of its Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant unit, a sale that could net $1 billion for the tobacco and food giant, according to Dean Witter Reynolds analyst David Goldman. RJR closed at $45, up $1.62, in trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Together with the expected sale of RJR's Canada Dry and Sunkist soft-drink operations to Cadbury Schweppes PLC of London, RJR could realize about $1.5 billion, Goldman said in a...

Faced with the twin burdens of debt and the persistent threat of lawsuits over smoking, RJR Nabisco announced Tuesday that it was splitting its food and tobacco businesses and selling its foreign tobacco company to a Japanese buyer. The moves will let the company pay down most of its debt and effectively remove itself from the tobacco business in hopes of appeasing shareholders. But the changes unravel one of the biggest mergers and most fought-over leveraged buyouts of the 1980s, one that...

The subtitle of "Barbarians at the Gate," the brilliant account of the takeover of RJR Nabisco in 1988, is "The Downfall of RJR Nabisco." In fact, it has taken more than a decade for a formal announcement of the dismantling of the wounded food and tobacco conglomerate. And still, the end is not in sight. Last week, Steven Goldstone, RJR Nabisco's chief executive officer, who was a lawyer for the company in 1988, announced a plan to sell the company's international...

RJR cuts: RJR Nabisco Inc. is cutting an additional 1,000 jobs at its tobacco division because it expects lower cigarette sales following the price hikes imposed to pay for its legal settlement with the states. The food and tobacco conglomerate announced Monday that the cutbacks will result in a restructuring charge of $335 million before taxes in the fourth quarter. The charge covers a writedown of equipment and facilities as well as severance costs for the...

RJR Nabisco Inc. received formal takeover offers from at least two groups by the bidding deadline Friday. As expected, offers were submitted by Kolhberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and by a group that includes RJR executives, Shearson Lehman Hutton Inc. and Salomon Inc. Spokesmen for the two groups confirmed that offers were submitted in New York just before the 5 p.m. deadline, but declined to provide details of the offers. "We submitted what we submitted," said a spokesman...

The old maxim, "nobody loves you when you're down and out," would seem to be the perfect theme for tobacco-company stocks this year. With legislators and litigators piling on, investors have been shying away from such giants as Philip Morris Cos. and RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp., sending prices into a steep descent. But now, it seems, a few bargain-hunting friends are turning up. "I don't use tobacco, I don't necessarily believe in it, but I'm trying to deal with reality,"...

The junk bond market is groaning under an avalanche of RJR Nabisco Inc. securities. The immediate health of the junk bond market depends on shoving $11 billion worth of RJR junk paper into the hands of new investors. No other huge leveraged buyouts can be done until the RJR logjam is cleared up. Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., investment banker to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., the buyer of RJR, has to place more than $11 billion of RJR securities to finance the buyout....

A top tobacco company executive admitted under oath to Congress for the first time Thursday that cigarettes are dangerous. The testimony by RJR Nabisco chairman and CEO Steven Goldstone came at a hearing where industry leaders pushed Congress to enact a $368.5 billion deal giving them partial immunity from future lawsuits. In written testimony prepared for the House Commerce Committee, top executives from five companies defended the proposed deal, under attack in Congress. Only Goldstone bluntly...